From its commencement the apostle designates God as the
Saviour-God. Paul is the apostle of Jesus Christ by the
commandment of God our Saviour. The Lord Jesus Christ is the
confidence and the hope of the soul.

We observe also that the apostle's wish differs from that which
he expresses when addressing an assembly; "Grace, mercy," he says,
"and peace." He does not say "mercy" to the assemblies, which
stand before God as such, in consequence of the mercy shown them,
and which (however low their condition might be) are viewed as
assemblies according to the nature in which they live by the
Spirit, in which there is no question of mercy, because that
nature is itself of God. Grace and peace are that which they are
to enjoy on the part of God. But when an individual is in
question, whatever his piety or faithfulness may be, he is both
flesh and spirit, his career has yet in part at least to be
provided for, having always need of mercy. Therefore the apostle
wishes it to Timothy as well as to Titus.* In the case of Philemon
he adds "the church in thy house," and his wish has therefore no
longer the personal form. But with Timothy and Titus it is the
apostle's intimacy with his beloved fellow-labourers. He knew how
much they needed mercy. It was his own resource, that which he had
experienced for the comfort of his own soul.

{*There is, however, some question as to the reading in Titus.}

The special object for which Paul had left Timothy at Ephesus,
when he went into Macedonia, was that he might watch over the
doctrine which was taught; but, being there, he gives him
directions for the interior order of the assembly. the evil which
the enemy sought to introduce, with regard to doctrine, had a
twofold character; fables of human imagination, and the
introduction of the law into Christianity. As to the former, it
was pure evil and edified no one. The apostle does not here say
much about it; he forewarned them of the evil; and the faith of
the assembly at Ephesus was sound enough to allow him to treat the
whole system as mere fables and genealogies. The Spirit gave
warning, that in later times it would have more disastrous
consequences; but at present there was only need to guard the
faithful from it as that which was worthless. Timothy was charged
by the apostle to attend to this.

But that which is committed to us in Christianity, as service,
is always, both in its object and its character, at the height of
the eternal principles of God, and belongs to the foundation of
our moral relations with Him.

The object of Paul's mandate is the love of a pure heart, a
good conscience, and faith unfeigned, and never the subtleties of
argument or of human imagination. This is a sure token for souls
that are sound in the faith and guided by the Spirit of
God. Speculative questions do not act on the conscience, nor bring
into the presence of God. Some had forsaken these great landmarks
of Christianity, turning aside to vain discussions. And here we
again find those same corrupters of Christianity, who, after
having rejected the Saviour, sowed the apostle's path with thorns
-- Judaising teachers. They desired to inculcate the law. The
human mind is adequate to this.

Now we see here the way in which one who is at the height of
the truth of God can put everything in its true place. Paul treats
the produce of human imagination as mere fables, but the law was
of God, and could be made useful if rightly employed. It was of
great service to condemn, to judge evil, to slay -- to show the
judgment of God against every wrong thing forbidden by the gospel
which revealed the glory of the blessed God -- a glory which
tolerated no evil and which had been committed to the apostle. It
could be used to act upon the conscience in this way, but it did
not build up the righteous; and, if any were under the law, they
were under the curse. As a sword for the conscience, it may be
used. But grace alone is the source of our preaching and the stay
of our souls.

These two systems and their respective places are presented in
verses 5-17, which form a kind of parenthesis, the apostle
resuming his address to Timothy in verse 18. The use of the law
is explained in verses 8-13. The apostle in a certain sense lowers
it here, while acknowledging its utility in its place, as the
weapon of righteousness for condemnation, and contrasts it with
the gospel which is connected with the glory of God Himself which
this gospel proclaims, as the law is connected with the wickedness
which it condemns.

Having spoken of the gospel of the glory which had been
committed to him, the apostle turns to the sovereign grace that
brought him into the knowledge of this glory which is the
testimony to the accomplishment of the work of grace.

"I give thanks," he says, "to Jesus Christ our Lord, who hath
counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry, who was before
a blasphemer and persecutor and injurious." This indeed was
grace.

The apostle speaks of two things in his conversion: the one,
how God could have compassion on him in such a state -- he was in
ignorance; the other, the purpose of God that the apostle should
be a pattern of grace to all. That he was in ignorance and
unbelief, although a condition which made mercy possible (for had
he been an enemy, knowing and willing it, while acquainted with
the grace of the gospel, it would have been impossible), yet that
condition was no excuse for his sin; he puts pure and perfect
grace forward, as having abounded in his case -- he was the chief
of sinners. This indeed was true. The high priests had resisted
the Holy Ghost to the uttermost. Paul had joined them in it: but
he was not satisfied with that. He desired to be the active enemy
of the faith wherever it existed, and to destroy the name of
Jesus. He had done much at Jerusalem, but he wished to satiate his
hatred even in foreign cities. We know his history in the
Acts. The living expression of Jewish resistance to grace, he was
also among men the expression of the most active human enmity to
Him whom God would glorify. Grace was greater than the sin, the
patience of God more perfect than the perseverance of man's
hostility. The latter was limited by man's importance, the former
has no limit in the nature of God but that of His own sovereign
will. Guilty as man may be, his sin cannot so reach God as to
disturb the independent action of His nature or change His
purposes. He was pleased to show forth in Paul a pattern of the
sovereignty of that grace and perfect goodness -- to the Jews
hereafter, who as a nation will be in Saul's condition -- to all
men as the enemies of God and by nature children of wrath. The
chief, the most active, the most inveterate of enemies was the
best and most powerful of witnesses that the grace of God abounded
over sin, and that the work of Christ was perfect to put it away.

"Unto God" -- being such in His nature, and having the
development of all the ages in His counsels -- "unto the only God,
invisible, incorruptible," he ascribes all praise and all
glory. Such was the foundation of Paul's ministry in contrast with
the law. It was founded on the revelation of grace; but it was a
revelation connected with the experience of its application to his
own case. Peter, guilty of denying a living Saviour, could speak
to the Jews of grace that met their case, which was his own; Paul,
formerly the enemy of a glorified Saviour and the resister of the
Holy Ghost, could proclaim grace that rose above even that state
of sinfulness, above all that could flow from human nature --
grace that opened the door to the Gentiles according to God's own
counsels, when the Jews had rejected everything, substituting the
heavenly assembly for them -- grace that sufficed for the future
admission of that guilty nation to better privileges than those
which they had forfeited.

Such was the call of this apostle, such his ministry. Having
shown the opposition between that which was committed to him and
the law (while affirming the usefulness of the latter, not as a
rule to the righteous, or a guide to God's people, but as judging
wrong), he resumes his address to Timothy in that which refers to
the details of his mission among the Ephesians.

At the end of 1 Timothy 1 he commits the charge to him -- sends
him his mandate. The term he employs relates to verses 3 and 5.
He had left Timothy at Ephesus in order to command some persons
there not to teach other doctrines than the truths of the gospel.
Now the end of the command, of this evangelical commission, was
love flowing from a pure heart and a good conscience and faith
unfeigned. For the gospel, while revealing the marvellous
counsels of God, maintains the great eternal principles of His
nature. It is this which distinguishes truth from the lofty
pretensions of heretical imaginations; it requires that man should
be in relationship with God really in heart and in truth according
to those principles. And this commission the apostle now
entrusted to Timothy, his own son in the faith. He was to maintain
it with an authority that had its basis in divine testimony, but
which he held formally from the apostle who appointed him to it;
not merely of his own accord, but according to prophecies which
had pointed him out for this purpose, and which were a means of
strength to him in the conflict he was thus brought into. The
conditions of victory were in accordance with the nature of the
commission. He was to keep the faith and a good conscience. Now
faith here is the doctrine of Christianity; yet not merely as
doctrine, but as that which the soul held between itself and God
as coming from Him. He had to maintain the truth, the christian
doctrine, but to hold it as so revealed by God Himself to the soul
that it should be the truth. The light should possess, with
well-defined outlines, the authority of God.

It was the faith, that which God had revealed, received with
certainty as such -- as the truth.

But, to be in communion with God, the conscience must be good,
must be pure; and if we are not in communion with God, we cannot
have the strength that would maintain us in the faith, that would
enable us to persevere in the profession of the truth, as God
gives it to us. Satan has then a hold upon us, and if the
intellect of one in this state is active, he falls into
heresy. The loss of a good conscience opens the door to Satan,
because it deprives us of communion with God; and the active mind,
under Satan's influence, invents ideas instead of confessing the
truth of God. The apostle treats the fruit of this state as
"blasphemies"; the will of man is at work, and the higher the
subject, the more an unbridled will, possessed by the enemy, goes
astray, and exalts itself against God, and against the subjection
of the whole mind to the obedience of Christ, to the authority of
the revelation of God.

The apostle had delivered up two persons of this character to
Satan -- that is to say, outwardly. Though already deceived by
him, they were not under his dominion as having power to torment
and make them suffer. For in the assembly (when in its normal
state) Satan has no power of that kind. It is guarded from it,
being the dwelling place of the Holy Ghost, and protected by God
and by the power of Christ. Satan can tempt us individually; but
he has no right over the members of the assembly as such. They are
within, and, weak as they may be, Satan cannot enter there. They
may be delivered to him for their good. This may take place at all
times -- witness the history of Job. But the assembly ought to
have the knowledge, and be the guardian and instrument of the
accomplishment of the dealings of God with His own. Within the
assembly is the Holy Ghost; God dwells in it as His house by the
Spirit. Without is the world of which Satan is the prince. The
apostle (by the power bestowed on him,* for it is an act of
positive power) delivered these two men into the power of the
enemy -- deprived them of the shelter they had enjoyed. They had
listened to the enemy -- had been his instruments. It was not in
the assembly, with members of Christ, that this should have taken
place. They must be made to feel what he was to whom they had
given ear. God thus made use of Satan himself as a rod for the
good of His rebellious children. Satan should instruct them,
through the pains he would make them suffer, of whatever kind it
might be, whether anguish of soul or of body, and the latter is
the immediate effect, in order that their will might be broken and
brought into subjection to God. Solemn discipline! Marvellous
power in the hands of man! but a proof that the love of God can
order all things for the purpose of delivering a soul and bringing
it to Himself.

{*We must not confound this act of power with discipline, which
is the act of the assembly and its formal duty. In 1 Corinthians 5
the apostle joins the assembly to himself in this act of power,
but he delivered with the power of Christ. The duty of the
assembly is stated there in verse 13. As to the saints' or
assembly's part, when God has exercised discipline, see 1 John 5:
16; James 5: 14, 15.}